Not sure if this has been talked about in the past, but I was watching T:L last night and I was thinking what would have happened if Alan went to the arcade straight away on getting the page? Firstly he would have recognised the laser technology, would he have put 2 and 2 together and gone in the grid? I wonder what the guards would have done when they saw what they would have assumed to be "Tron"

What would Rinzler have done seeing Alan? Or Clu for that matter. Might be an interesting Fan fiction story to ponder on, I just can't help but wonder.on line abortion pill misoprostol dose abortion medical abortion pill onlineorder abortion pill http://unclejohnsprojects.com/template/default.aspx?morning-after-pill-price where to buy abortion pill

There have been several fanfics along that line, most of them slash. "Once and Future King" and [url ="http://archiveofourown.org/works/285864/chapters/456088"]"Engineers"[/url] come to mind. I wonder if that pager wasn't meant as a trap for Alan, and Sam just stumbled into the trap first.

Assuming a non-slash, straight-Legacy (meaning: Bradley did not get a sneak peek of digital hell) scenario? Well, a sixty year old man would likely not be sent to Games, but if anyone picked up on the resemblance, they'd Fed Ex him over to Clu. Clu might try passing himself off as Flynn with 20 years of godhood going to his head, or tell Alan just enough "certain point of view" truth to poison things.

Tronzler would be the biggest wild card in the scenario. If Clu's smart, he'll keep Rinzler and Alan as far away from one another as possible. User in one pocket, Program in the other. However, Murphy's Law would mean the pair would meet. It could be in passing, it could be Tronzler getting a look and feeling a pull he's not felt in years. If Clu has a major lapse in judgement, he could try to order Rinzler to attack Alan.

That's when things would go pear-shaped. Yeah, Clu, Alan was a LOT better about overrides, safeties, and Three Laws compliance than Flynn ever thought of being. I'm guessing a kidnapping and running like crazy, possibly to what's left of Argon or to the portal.

By now, word of the chaos gets to Flynn, who will likely tell Quorra to stay put (because Iso within a mile of Rinzler will mean dead Iso) and see what he can do to pull his buddy out of the fire. With luck, this means everyone winds up at his lavish prison in the Outlands. Rinzler is going to be tied down and a brief argument is likely to happen. Flynn arguing for a mercy kill because de-rez would be preferable and there's nothing of Tron left (maybe even likening it to taking Jordan off life support), but Alan starts making the case "No, he's my son, and we're finding another way" That might click something with Flynn; Clu's also his kid, and maybe he never thought of him that way...

I'm betting a mad dash to the portal, possibly using some combined User power to get a broken vehicle fixed quickly. Queue the confrontation, but instead of a sudden betrayal on the light jets, Clu might have a bit of a problem with two wizard-level Users AND a healed Tron. I'm still thinking Flynn makes the sacrifice play, but it spits the other three in analog.

It's an entire universe in there, one we created, but it's beyond us now. Really. It's outgrown us. You know, every time you shut off your computer...do you know what you're doing? Have you ever reformatted a hard drive? Deleted old software? Destroyed an entire universe?"

-- Jet Bradley, Tron: Ghost in the Machine on why being a User isn't necessarily a good thing.

I don't know that Alan would be so quick to figure out what's going on as Sam is. Sam no doubt vividly remembers the stories his dad told him, and he probably believed them at the time, so it's not so much of a jump for him. Alan... not so much. For him, it's more likely to come in because he's familiar with the idea of digitization (though not of live entities) and he will probably recognize the laser for what it is. How quickly he might make the jump from "here is a digitization laser pointed at the workstation" and "there's something IN there and Flynn's in there!"... I don't know.

Since he does know what the laser is, he's unlikely to make the same mistake Sam made and digitize himself accidentally. So the next question becomes whether he'd do it on purpose. Somehow I've never seen Alan being the adventurous type, so I'd say he's more likely to have a browse through the code from the outside and try to see what he can figure out before he's going to zap himself with a laser, especially since the idea of Flynn being in there would be no more than a hunch (and especially since even if he figures Flynn DID get hit with that thing, he has little reason to think it wouldn't simply be fatal-- Flynn was messing with digitization and had a laser accident {you know Flynn, not the carefullest of girls} and now he's dead, and that sucks but it explains a lot).

After all, just because you can explain something in code, doesn't necessarily mean that there's an "in there" to exist in. You can describe what I'm like in frightening detail, but it doesn't mean I'm physically *there* or that "there" is a physical place to be at all. You might imagine it's all very esoteric and theoretical.

Now, what would Tronzler do? Well, I imagine a user and program have some sort of connection in-Grid, so he might well know Alan. Which would be very interesting indeed, but we'd get to the punch line far too quickly.

J Wrote: Well, a sixty year old man would likely not be sent to Games, but if anyone picked up on the resemblance, they'd Fed Ex him over to Clu.

I'm not sure I'd give the programs so much credit as to understand user aging or what it's all about. As far as I can see, they themselves don't age. Some programs appear older, like Sark and Dumont, but that's probably simply their appearance and has nothing to do with their abilities (obviously-- Sark gives "younger" Tron a run for his money). Even Clu. He hasn't seen Flynn since Flynn looked young, remember.

I'm not sure they'd recognize Alan as an "older" version of Tron, nor understand that him being older means he'd have reduced physical function.

I could get behind the concept of programs possibly understanding some things about users and the user world through encyclopedia programs and the internet, but on a closed system like that? Not so sure.

For that matter, I'm not entirely sure programs on Flynn's new system would even be familiar with the concept of a program looking like his/her user. The film would suggest they don't, unless all of the programs on the system were not written by Flynn and somewhere out there, each has a programmer who resembles them.

Kat Wrote:Since he does know what the laser is, he's unlikely to make the same mistake Sam made and digitize himself accidentally. So the next question becomes whether he'd do it on purpose. Somehow I've never seen Alan being the adventurous type, so I'd say he's more likely to have a browse through the code from the outside and try to see what he can figure out before he's going to zap himself with a laser, especially since the idea of Flynn being in there would be no more than a hunch (and especially since even if he figures Flynn DID get hit with that thing, he has little reason to think it wouldn't simply be fatal-- Flynn was messing with digitization and had a laser accident {you know Flynn, not the carefullest of girls} and now he's dead, and that sucks but it explains a lot).

I agree that Alan wouldn't make the same mistake that Sam makes, he would see the laser and think of the encom tests. He would probably as you say go through the code or at least some of it. Here's a point though just slightly off topic, would Tronzler show up in the directory as Tron or Rinzler? Think Alan would recognise his own program? Back on topic I think Alan even though he wasn't the adventurous guy like Flynn would probably take a chance, as Sam said he is the only one who thinks he is still out there somewhere.

Kat Wrote:Now, what would Tronzler do? Well, I imagine a user and program have some sort of connection in-Grid, so he might well know Alan. Which would be very interesting indeed, but we'd get to the punch line far too quickly.

This point made me think instantly of what Quorra said to Sam that Clu would detect Flynn instantly if he entered the grid, would the same be said for tronzler? I know Tron was just a program created by Alan in a different way to Clu, but would he still know that he was there on the Grid?

And about the aging, I think we can say Bruce has aged rather well and you can instantly recognise him regardless if you're watching Tron, Babylon 5 or Tron legacy (just to name a few things), even his voice is instantly recognisable. It would be very interesting especially if T:U is canon, would this unite the factions that are spoken of in T:L?? It makes for insteresting speculation

Kat Wrote:I don't know that Alan would be so quick to figure out what's going on as Sam is. Sam no doubt vividly remembers the stories his dad told him, and he probably believed them at the time, so it's not so much of a jump for him. Alan... not so much. For him, it's more likely to come in because he's familiar with the idea of digitization (though not of live entities) and he will probably recognize the laser for what it is. How quickly he might make the jump from "here is a digitization laser pointed at the workstation" and "there's something IN there and Flynn's in there!"... I don't know.

I agree. Since I don't think Flynn ever told Alan about his digital experiences (beyond that he had something big he was planning to tell Alan soon), so I don't think Alan would as quickly/intuitively grasp that he was in the computer if he'd gotten zapped unawares. But just finding the laser? Familiarity with the project in general would help, and I do think he would have suspected that Flynn was inside just by virtue of knowing about Lora's work with the laser and seeing this one here and Flynn's rather disturbing "IN THERE is our future" talk.

Since he does know what the laser is, he's unlikely to make the same mistake Sam made and digitize himself accidentally. So the next question becomes whether he'd do it on purpose. Somehow I've never seen Alan being the adventurous type, so I'd say he's more likely to have a browse through the code from the outside and try to see what he can figure out before he's going to zap himself with a laser, especially since the idea of Flynn being in there would be no more than a hunch (and especially since even if he figures Flynn DID get hit with that thing, he has little reason to think it wouldn't simply be fatal-- Flynn was messing with digitization and had a laser accident {you know Flynn, not the carefullest of girls} and now he's dead, and that sucks but it explains a lot).

I do think Alan would think Flynn was alive and grab on to the idea that he was in the Grid. Alan's never accepted the idea that Flynn is dead. And he just got a page. He probably would think it was from Flynn (whose rampant irresponsibility got him trapped inside), I think. But I agree he would not accidentally digitize himself and I don't think he'd do it intentionally, either. At least, not immediately. He wouldn't want to end up like Flynn, after all. And he wouldn't want to leave his loved ones wondering the way Flynn did if he couldn't get back. Now, whether or not he's married to Lora (depending on whether extra-movie material counts), it would be very logical to get in touch with her or with Gibbs (if he's still living and of sound mind) as they would be the only experts he could find on the technology. Really, from his perspective, if Gibbs or Lora could just just enter the "undigitize" instruction on the keyboard (after verifying data integrity), then that's the safest and best thing to do (though it doesn't make for much of a movie). He'd want to tell Sam what he'd discovered, though, before doing anything else.

So, if Alan did go in to the Grid, I think it would be a planned thing. He would think Flynn sent the page. He would be expecting to find Flynn. Clu was probably actually expecting Alan, since Alan was the one he contacted, and so I think security forces would have recognized him as someone to bring to Clu. I really don't think Clu would have tried to play it like he really was Flynn, since he didn't do that with Sam. The wild card is Tron. Clu would have planned for Alan and maybe tried to program Rinzler as less vulnerable to Alan, but I think that would have been a failure. Look what seeing Flynn again did to him - it'd be even stronger with his own User, Alan. Maybe Clu would have kept Rinzler away from Alan? The most interesting question to me is what Clu actually had planned for Alan when he sent the message - did he even have a specific plan for Alan leading to Flynn's disc becoming available?

Tzigone Wrote:I do think Alan would think Flynn was alive and grab on to the idea that he was in the Grid. Alan's never accepted the idea that Flynn is dead. And he just got a page. He probably would think it was from Flynn (whose rampant irresponsibility got him trapped inside), I think. But I agree he would not accidentally digitize himself and I don't think he'd do it intentionally, either. At least, not immediately. He wouldn't want to end up like Flynn, after all. And he wouldn't want to leave his loved ones wondering the way Flynn did if he couldn't get back. Now, whether or not he's married to Lora (depending on whether extra-movie material counts), it would be very logical to get in touch with her or with Gibbs (if he's still living and of sound mind) as they would be the only experts he could find on the technology. Really, from his perspective, if Gibbs or Lora could just just enter the "undigitize" instruction on the keyboard (after verifying data integrity), then that's the safest and best thing to do (though it doesn't make for much of a movie). He'd want to tell Sam what he'd discovered, though, before doing anything else.

I'm still not entirely sure what Alan thinks of the page. Or Flynn being gone, for that matter. He never comes out and says he thinks Flynn's not dead. He admits to Sam that he doesn't think Flynn would have deliberately left Sam, but of course, being dead is a good excuse to leave someone not-on-purpose; he seems more to be countering Sam's insinuation that his dad just walked out on him.

And as I've said before (probably about a billion times), Alan and the pager confuses me. He sleeps with this thing because he thinks it's so important, BUT when he does get a page, he waits until the next day to do anything about it and then all he does with it is pass the info off to Sam, hoping Sam might investigate it... some time... perhaps. That's not really something you do if you truly believe that your friend is still somewhere to send you an urgent page on which you will need to act immediately. For that matter, if you have hope you'll still hear from him, why disconnect the phone line from which you will hear? (I am dying to know what instructions Flynn gave Alan with the pager. Should he call the police? Come to the arcade? Read a special set of instructions Flynn will leave somewhere for him that will explain everything and detail how he should help?) And even if he assumed Flynn got into trouble, why would he take 20 years to ring Alan up about it?

I've always sort of wondered if he doesn't just use it as an excuse to light a fire under Sam's ass. "Send him to the arcade, maybe he'll get nostalgic and decide to help me out after all." After all (as I've also said before), what does he expect Sam to find there that trained forensic investigators, and no doubt Alan himself, never found?

Unfortunately, this is one of those things they sort of expect to give to us and we're supposed to take it at face value without thinking about it too hard or asking questions. And this one's a big one for that.

(Although: what didn't occur to me before, is my assumption that Alan isn't familiar with digitization of living beings and therefore wouldn't have reason to think Flynn would survive digitization. After all, an orange is matter but it has no sentience... and he might not know how a laser would transfer sentience or if it would. But, we also don't know how far Encom went with digitization [nor do we have confirmation that the project isn't still going on even in 2010], so it's possible that in the years since T82, they've possibly moved on to live animal subjects or something, and would find out that you can transfer a sentient being into the computer and have it come out still alive.)

I'm not sure, either, how much Clu knew about the pager. Did he know who it would call and why? How does Flynn make contact with it from inside? And where did Clu obtain the knowledge of how to do that/a device that might do it/whatever? Did he get it from Flynn, as in steal it? Or is it something Flynn also gave him, as a safeguard-- "if something happens to me in here, do this to contact someone on the outside"? Does he know it connects to Alan? Does he know it connects to anyone? Did he think it would bring someone in, or was it just a stab in the dark to see what happened, if anything, and whether whatever happened might be able to help him out somehow?

Argh. Should have been a much longer film; there is so much that really should've been explained better, but they didn't have time, so they just sort of, as above, threw it at us half-baked and hoped we wouldn't look too close.

That's one of the reasons why I port in as much of 2.0 that I do, even if it's "discredited." It would cover a lot of those plot holes.

A) If the events of 2.0 happened, Alan would have been shot to cyberspace. This would not only let him know the technology works, but what happens when you pull the switch on the laser. Plus, his wife made that laser. He probably know a lot about how it works just listening to her.

B) On the other hand, he would also know how dangerous it was. 2.0 has a couple levels of escort mission to try and keep him alive. Alan's got the good sense to duck or take cover when discs start flying, but it's still possible to get a nonstandard game over if a disc ends up flying at the wrong angle.

C) F-Con shot him in there to get him killed without the messy hassle of trying to dispose of a body. He heard their CEO (which was implied to be Dillinger...but is an awful lot like whatever Dillinger Junior is chatting with at the end of The Next Day), and could ID the voice, cutting him off in mid threat, saying he'll deal with that later. It wouldn't be too much of a leap to think this crew "disposed" of Flynn the same way, and only a little bit of a stretch to think Flynn could have been savvy enough to survive despite it.

--------------------------------------

But even if you cut that part out...

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1) I always figured Alan really thought Flynn was dead - possibly suicide (he was pretty unstable in the last parts of Betrayal), but likely murder (Flynn wasn't the most diplomatic of guys, and probably added to a list that Dillinger sat on top of). Refusing to say his friend was dead wasn't so much denial as a way to extend the proverbial middle finger at his friends' enemies and/or killers.

2) The pager was more a sadder memento of happier times. It's not like he ever expected it to go off, but he kept it and carried it for the same reason others would carry some token of a fallen friend; a reminder to never forget, to keep holding that line best he can.

3) He discovers the clues left behind in the ARG and sets the younger crew of Flynn Lives on the treasure hunt, gathering the pieces for the ARG bit at ComicCon.

4) Per the ARG, they appear to have been some sort of trap set by Clu to get the coordinates of the pager to send the message and possibly lure Bradley into a trap.

5) I'm betting when that went off, no one was more shocked. Queue phone calls to Lora and Roy. Possibly some numbers run by Ma3a (if there is a version of her in this timeline) to get information about the signal source.

6) It's telling he was paged well before Sam's stunt, but holds off until after the board meeting and Sam's "check-in" to actually approach the kid about the news. I'm smelling some kind of Batman Gambit in play; wait until after the stunt, tell Sam about the page, try to pull on that small spark of hope he has about his dad, and convince him to come to the arcade as back up. Even if Sam doesn't buy it now, he'll be too curious not to investigate. Either way, the kid goes to the arcade. The only hiccup in how it turned out is that Sam beat Alan to the arcade, and due to the time distillation between analog and digital, it was all over by the time Alan arrived.

It's an entire universe in there, one we created, but it's beyond us now. Really. It's outgrown us. You know, every time you shut off your computer...do you know what you're doing? Have you ever reformatted a hard drive? Deleted old software? Destroyed an entire universe?"

-- Jet Bradley, Tron: Ghost in the Machine on why being a User isn't necessarily a good thing.

It's telling he was paged well before Sam's stunt, but holds off until after the board meeting and Sam's "check-in" to actually approach the kid about the news. I

I tend to think of it as he was paged after the meeting we saw, but before midnight (when Sam was in jail) and just waited to tell Sam first before he went. I know that's a little wonky with the timeline, but it's a little wobbly anyway, depending on where ENCOM is located. I mean, after the page at the end, he's there at the arcade in a t-shirt (pajamas?), immediately responding, etc.

And I definitely think Alan considered the idea that Flynn was alive somehow, but not having run away. Too much of the talk with Sam was how Alan was the only who thought he was still alive and he was "right about everything" and all that. Plus the way the ARG interview went where he wouldn't say the words and all.abortion pills online abortion pill online purchase cytotec abortion

J Wrote:6) It's telling he was paged well before Sam's stunt, but holds off until after the board meeting and Sam's "check-in" to actually approach the kid about the news. I'm smelling some kind of Batman Gambit in play; wait until after the stunt, tell Sam about the page, try to pull on that small spark of hope he has about his dad, and convince him to come to the arcade as back up. Even if Sam doesn't buy it now, he'll be too curious not to investigate. Either way, the kid goes to the arcade. The only hiccup in how it turned out is that Sam beat Alan to the arcade, and due to the time distillation between analog and digital, it was all over by the time Alan arrived.

Yes, exactly what I was trying to say. Alan didn't think Sam was going to find anything there except his own conscience (as Alan sees it, anyway-- whether it's *actually* better or worse for Sam to get involved, is another debate entirely).

Tzigone Wrote:And I definitely think Alan considered the idea that Flynn was alive somehow, but not having run away. Too much of the talk with Sam was how Alan was the only who thought he was still alive and he was "right about everything" and all that. Plus the way the ARG interview went where he wouldn't say the words and all.

Kat Wrote:Yes, exactly what I was trying to say. Alan didn't think Sam was going to find anything there except his own conscience (as Alan sees it, anyway-- whether it's *actually* better or worse for Sam to get involved, is another debate entirely).

I am 50/50 on this, I agree that perhaps thats why he decided that Sam should go. But also I think there was a little bit of fear that he was wrong all along and that everyone was right in that Flynn just ran away and is probably dead. For me that explains the expression on his face when Sam tells him he was right about everything. I mean face it, how many times have you been afraid to do something in case you were wrong? It also might explain why Alan was there at the end, he decided that he should go after all and face what he was afraid to do when he got the page.order abortion pill morning after pill price where to buy abortion pillabortion pills online abortion pill online purchase cytotec abortion

I thought Sam meant Alan was right about Flynn not deliberately leaving him...

I don't think it's just that. Sam said Alan was right about everything. Although that also includes about Sam's "interesting way of being disinterested", I do think it includes about Flynn maybe being alive. Especially given some of the in-movie news commentary and the ARG-interviews and Flynn Lives and especially given the pager. Sure it might be mostly symbolic, but to me, Alan hadn't given up on Flynn and didn't think he was definitely dead.

And for Alan taking so long to tell Sam (if he did, which I don't really think) - Sam wasn't answering his phone. Alan finally had to go to his house and just wait for him to show up. Sam's been avoiding talking to him? Probably because he knew Alan would start talking about Flynn and ENCOM again.